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Sir Ian Wilmut , the scientist who lead the cloning of Dolly the sheep , has died at the age of 79 .
Wilmut direct the University of Edinburgh team that successfully created Dolly , the first mammal to be clone from an grownup cellular telephone , in 1996 .
Wilmut poses with Dolly the sheep.
Other research worker had managed toclone mammalsby splitting conceptus in a run tube-shaped structure and implanting them in adult . But Dolly — named after the singer Dolly Parton — was cloned from the mammary secretory organ of a 6 - twelvemonth - old Dorset Finn ewe and was the first to be grown from anadult somatic ( body ) cell .
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In 2017 , Wilmut give away that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson ’s disease .
Journalists surround Dolly following her announcement to the world in February 1997.
" We are deeply saddened to find out of the passing of Professor Sir Ian Wilmut . He was a behemoth of the scientific world,“Sir Peter Mathieson , principal and vice - chancellor of the University of Edinburgh , say in a statement .
Mathieson added that Wilmut ’s breakthrough " transformed scientific thought at the time " and " go along to fire many of the advances that have been made in the field of regenerative medicine that we see today . "
How was Dolly the sheep cloned?
Animals had been cloned from corporal cell before Dolly , notably frogs clone from hide cadre in 1958 by British biologist John Gurdon . But Dolly was significant because decades of die attempts had made biologists think that the cognitive process in mammal was all but impossible .
The scientist made Dolly by extracting DNA from a cubicle taken from an adult sheep ’s mammary secreter , placing it in an empty sheep egg cubicle and micro-cook it with electrical energy . This translate the egg into an embryo , which was then implanted inside a surrogate sheep to bring to term .
The discovery lead to an blowup of inquiry into stem cells and their medical applications .
How long did dolly the sheep live?
Dolly died in 2003 after living to eld 6 , around half the distinctive 10 - to-12 - year lifespan of a sheep , and had a number of clone sister direct from the same batch of cells as her .
" The birth of Dolly and the raw understanding of the chance to vary the functioning of mobile phone made research worker believe other potential slipway of modifying cell , " Wilmuttold Live Science in 2017 .
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